Amazon’s Blessings of the Season

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter and I go back and forth during each year’s holiday gifting season, trying to be the first one to notice whenever any publication or Web site posts its “best crime fiction of the year” selections. Now and then, I manage to get the jump on George, but he generally has the sharper eye.

He invariably looks forward to espying the top-20 lists produced by online commercial giant Amazon, declaring they “are always among the best.” Below are Amazon’s two brand-new rolls.

Best Mysteries, Thrillers, and Suspense Books of 2023:
• Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane (Harper)
• Bright Young Women, by Jessica Knoll (S&S/Marysue Rucci)
• All the Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim (Hogarth)
• Symphony of Secrets, by Brendan Slocumb (Anchor)
• Murder Your Employer, by Rupert Holmes (Avid Reader Press)
• Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon (Morrow)
• Age of Vice, by Deepti Kapoor (Riverhead)
• The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua (Minotaur)
• Drowning, by T.J. Newman (Avid Reader Press)
• Strange Sally Diamond, by Liz Nugent (Gallery/Scout Press)
• Pet, by Catherine Chidgey (Europa Editions)
• Those Empty Eyes, by Charlie Donlea (Kensington)
• The Only One Left, by Riley Sager (Dutton)
• Going Zero, by Anthony McCarten (Harper)
• The Quiet Tenant, by Clémence Michallon (Knopf)
• A House With Good Bones, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Nightfire)
• All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, by William Landay (Bantam)
• Kill Show, by Daniel Sweren-Becker (‎Harper)
• The White Lady, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)

Best Mysteries, Thrillers, and Suspense Books of 2023—
New and Continuing Series:
• The Mystery Guest, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
• The Last Devil to Die, by Richard Osman (Viking)
• Resurrection Walk, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• City of Dreams, by Don Winslow (Morrow)
• The Spy Coast, by Tess Gerritsen (Thomas & Mercer)
• Blood Sisters, by Vanessa Lillie (Berkley)
• Glory B, by Danielle Arceneaux (Pegasus Crime)
• Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord, by Celeste Connally (Minotaur)
• Exiles, by Jane Harper (Flatiron)
• Red Queen, by Juan Gómez-Jurado (Minotaur)
• Lying Beside You, by Michael Robotham (Scribner)
• The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies, by Alison
Goodman (Berkley)
• The Bell in the Fog, by Lev AC Rosen (Forge)
• My Father’s House, by Joseph O’Connor (Europa Editions)
• Cold-Blooded Liar, by Karen Rose (Berkley)
• Death Comes to Marlow, by Robert Thorogood (HQ)
• Gangsters Don’t Die, by Tod Goldberg (Counterpoint)
• Dark Angel, by John Sandford (Putnam)
• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q.
Sutanto (Berkley)
• After That Night, by Karin Slaughter (Morrow)

* * *

In addition, George points me to Adam LeBor’s five choices, for the Financial Times, of this year’s best thriller novels:

• The Year of the Locust, by Terry Hayes (Bantam)
• Kennedy 35, by Charles Cumming (HarperCollins)
• Red Queen, by Juan Gómez-Jurado (Macmillan)
• A Line in the Sand, by Kevin Powers (Sceptre)
• White Fox, Owen Matthews (Bantam Press)

Only yesterday afternoon on this page, I posted FT critic Barry Forshaw’s choices of the last year’s best crime novels.

If you are interested, George has also posted links in his blog to inventories of “bests” from the magazines Harpers Bazaar, Time, and The Week, plus those from the online bookstore Tertulia.